Back in the old country

I stopped to let the car cool off and to study the map.

I had expected to be near my objective by now, but everything still seemed alien to me.

I was only five when my father had taken me abroad, and that was eighteen years ago.

When my mother had died after a tragic accident, he did not quickly recover from the shock and loneliness.

Everything around him was full of her presence, continually reopening the wound.

So he decided to emigrate.

In the new country he became absorbed in making a new life for the two of us, so that he gradually ceased to grieve.

He did not marry again and I was brought up without a woman's care; but I lacked for nothing, for he was both father and mother to me.

He always meant to go back one day, but not to stay.

His roots and mine had become too firmly embedded in the new land.

But he wanted to see the old folk again and to visit my mother's grave.

He became mortally ill a few months before we had planned to go and, when he knew that he was dying, he made me promise to go on my own.

I hired a car the day after landing and bought a comprehensive book of maps, which I found most helpful on the cross-country journey, but which I did not think I should need on the last stage.

It was not that I actually remembered anything at all.

But my father had described over and over again what we should see at every milestone, after leaving the nearest town, so that I was positive I should recognize it as familiar territory.

Well, I had been wrong, for I was now lost.

I looked at the map and then at the milometer.

I had come ten miles since leaving the town, and at this point, according to my father, I should be looking at farms and cottages in a valley, with the spire of the church of our village showing in the far distance.

I could see no valley, no farms, no cottages and no church spire ---- only a lake.

I decided that I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere.

So I drove back to the town and began to retrace the route, taking frequent glances at the map.

I landed up at the same corner.

The curious thing was that the lake was not marked on the map.

I felt as if I had stumbled into a nightmare country, as you sometimes do in dreams.

And, as in a nightmare, there was nobody in sight to help me.

Fortunately for me, as I was wondering what to do next, there appeared on the horizon a man on horseback, riding in my direction.

I waited till he came near, then I asked him the way to our old village.

He said that there was now no village.

I thought he must have misunderstood me, so I repeated its name.

This time he pointed to the lake.

The village no longer existed because it had been submerged, and all the valley too.

The lake was not a natural one, but a man-made reservoir.